Wohooo! 61st place in yesterday's Comparison Sudoku was great, my 2nd best result ever (obviously behind Sudoku), my 3rd result in top 100 and well, it wasn't too far from top 50, 20 seconds off That means my overall rating jumped up by 16 straight away and Comparison Sudoku rating is my new highest -- 855 (300 up)! I only lost out to afcwarren from here (ladder) and beat both oenomel and apollo1001 Would surely have beaten some more known puzzlers but maybe just maybe they are all at world championship atm...

EDIT: Also, this time was good enough for 1st Kyu, which means rating nicely over 2000 -- wowow!

Congrats! I was pleased with my time, but you trounced me Now you just need to repeat that every time one comes up and you'll start flying up the rankings. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the Northern/Southern UK grudge match in the league when the teams face off...

Tnx! I defo enjoyed this puzzle, didn't have many places where I had to stop and think and that's what I always try to avoid in all sudokus as it's a must for a good time And yea, your time's very good too.
Well, that would be great but unfortunately it doesn't come up very often. I could get at least as good result in normal Sudoku too though and possibly a decent time in Killer Sudoku if everything clicks... In others I might get decent results sometimes but in many puzzles I'm still struggling and a couple like Slalom for example just don't seem to be for me. Last week solved my first ever Rundweg/Fences (it wasn't easy), so now there is only 1 puzzle that I'm yet to solve.

Yea, this match is gonna be exciting!

EDIT after solving Thursday 10th's puzzles:
Solved my first ever Number Pyramid!!! And though I am disappointed with the mistake, I'm otherwise happy with the time and result, took some risks but I'd say it's normal that it didn't pay off first time, moreover I'd say I must have felt confident at it that I took a risk, so I think I actually quite like this puzzle!
Also, Thermometer time 1:30 seems like good but apparently it's actually mediocre...

EDIT 2: Update after Sunday, 14th. Wow, 2 sudokus in 2 days, that's amazing, I wish it would happen more often! I didn't solve very well this time, both were just OK, good enough to be in top 200 (and 9th, 8th Kyu respectively) but nowhere near top 100. Second one was tougher but went slightly better I think. In the first one even apollo1001 was better than me (well done btw, decent time there) and I spent a couple of minutes not finding anything as I hadn't filled in (and noticed) a 2, a bit of a blind moment
But still my overall rating went up by 17 pts only thanks to those 2 and my sudoku rating is now 814 (only Comparison Sudoku one is slightly higher), I'm back in overall sudoku top 500 and I've even overtaken dickoon himself, woah!

As of right now, there are about 60 people who have solved daily puzzle #1 on Croco-Puzzle, and about 100 who have attempted but not completed.
So we may end up with another example of "median time = unsolved".

I'm going to pretend that this puzzle is simply Croco-Puzzle's way of paying tribute to the Puzzle Marathon contest over at LMI.
Certainly, the times on this puzzle are pretty similar to some of the puzzles on the Marathon...

wish I'd been more alert to think of doing this last night, but for puzzles like that it's certainly worth taking the 30 second hit of opening the puzzle, seeing it's ridiculous, resizing the applet (http://www.croco-puzzle.com/Benutzerkonto/index.php) and reopening the puzzle

I saw the description and it didn't quite sink in.
"10x10 Rundweg". OK, that's normal. Wait ... did that say 10x10 HEXES? Isn't that a lot of hexagons? Uh-oh...

I can't say I was surprised to get a FV on that one, since trying to figure out if I had only one loop made my head hurt. I noticed one issue and fixed it before submitting, but still had two loops on first attempt. I was just glad to be able to fix it without redoing large portions of the puzzle...

Without a list of numbers to fill the grid with (as per the example), the sunflower puzzle just released on croco has an infinite list of solutions parametrised by Z x Z. Although the solution code only has an infinite list of solutions parametrised by Z.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that my particular guess at the solution wasn't the one they had in mind

Yeah, once I figured out what the solution set was, I entered one of the infinitely many valid solutions and called it a night.
But it was sort of fun figuring out exactly what the constraints on the solution were, I guess

A message regarding the Online Shop at Crocopuzzle.
It will be closing permanently on/after Saturday 29/11.
If you have acquired any credit (typically from playing the weekly prize-puzzles) then now is the time to spend it.
To check your balance, log in, click on Onlineshop, and there'll be a Guthaben (=balance) in the bottom-left corner.
Or if you want to buy something with a credit card, now is your last chance!
Also, there is a page with some English instructions.

In summary, the shop contains about 70 copies of the Denksel puzzle magazine, 3 Starter puzzle sets, 2 seasons of the Crocoliga puzzles, and 3 special sets (handmade, crypto, and advent).

Thanks Tom,
When I got to my current score there were at least 5 others above me, but one by one they slipped down. I was even 70 points above 2nd place recently, but I see Hideaki climbing up again.
I'm not very active these days, although the authors are all top-quality and these daily handmade puzzles are generally excellent.
Every now and then I find time to log in and do a few, I prefer the U2 variants to the U1 easy sprints.